Tough RC

[Chimp]

A recent generation of historians of science, far from portraying accepted scientific views as objectively accurate reflections of a natural world, explain the acceptance of such views in terms of the ideological biases of certain influential scientists or the institutional and rhetorical power such scientists wield. As an example of ideological bias, it has been argued that Pasteur rejected the theory of spontaneous generation not because of experimental evidence but because he rejected the materialist ideology implicit in that doctrine. These historians seem to find allies in certain philosophers of science who argue that scientific views are not imposed by reality but are free inventions of creative minds, and that scientific claims are never more than brave conjectures, always subject to inevitable future falsification. While these philosophers of science themselves would not be likely to have much truck with the recent historians, it is an easy step from their views to the extremism of the historians.

While this rejection of the traditional belief that scientific views are objective reflections of the world may be fashionable, it is deeply implausible. We now know, for example, that water is made of hydrogen and oxygen and that parents each contribute one-half of their children’s complement of genes. I do not believe any serious-minded and informed person can claim that these statements are not factual descriptions of the world or that they will inevitably be falsified.

However, science’s accumulation of lasting truths about the world is not by any means (by any means: adv.无论如何) a straightforward matter. We certainly need to get beyond the naive view that the truth will automatically reveal itself to any scientist who looks in the right direction; most often, in fact, a whole series of prior discoveries is needed to tease reality’s truths from experiment and observation. And the philosophers of science mentioned above are quite right to argue that new scientific ideas often correct old ones by indicating errors and imprecision (as, say, Newton’s ideas did to Kepler’s). Nor would I deny that there are interesting questions to be answered about the social processes in which scientific activity is embedded. The persuasive processes by which particular scientific groups establish their experimental results as authoritative are themselves social activities and can be rewardingly studied as such. Indeed, much of the new work in the history of science has been extremely revealing about the institutional interactions and rhetorical devices that help determine whose results achieve prominence.

But one can accept all this without accepting the thesis that natural reality never plays any part at all in determining what scientists believe. What the new historians ought to be showing us is how those doctrines that do in fact fit reality work their way through the complex social processes of scientific activity to eventually receive general scientific acceptance.

1. It can be inferred from the passage that the author would be most likely to agree with which one of the following characterizations of scientific truth?

(A) It is often implausible.

(B) It is subject to inevitable falsification.

(C) It is rarely obvious and transparent

(D) It is rarely discovered by creative processes.

(E) It is less often established by experimentation than by the rhetorical power of scientists.

Couls anyone please explain this question?

[RonPurewal]

so i assume they want (c), but, before we elaborate on this, could you please tell where you got this question?

it's doubtful that it came from the GMATPREP tests (which are supposed to be the exclusive purview of this folder), because of
1) the random chinese characters used to explain 'by any means',
2) the 'i do not believe' in the middle of the passage (gmat passages never contain first- or second-person pronouns... at least not as far as we've seen)

so please tell the source for this problem, and then we'll answer in more detail.
if it's really a gmatprep problem, could you kindly post a screen shot from the actual gmatprep test on which it appeared? if there really is a passage containing a first-person pronoun, that will be of extreme interest to us.

thank you.

[RonPurewal]

another poster has mentioned that this problem is actually from the lsat. therefore, it does not belong in this folder; this folder is for GMAT PREP SOFTWARE questions only.

please read the forum rules and pay attention to the identity of the folder in which you are posting!